


Heart-Shaped Glasses

by Emery



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Glasses, M/M, Sexual Frustration, Sloppy Makeouts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 22:55:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1074030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emery/pseuds/Emery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Everything should have been so much clearer now that Eren could see, but the fact of the matter was—it wasn’t. Jean’s face may have been distinct, but Eren’s feelings for him were still as blurry and muddled as they had always been."</p><p>After nearly three years of military training, the medical personnel finds Eren in need of glasses, but Eren's disgust with the wire frames on his face goes far beyond self-consciousness. There's a problem now that he can see clearly for the first time in years, and that problem is Jean--or, more particularly, the fact that Jean is hotter than Eren had ever imagined. Matters certainly aren't improved by Jean's apparent attraction to anyone wearing an extra pair of eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heart-Shaped Glasses

**Author's Note:**

> _Un-beta'd_
> 
> Filled for a prompt on the SnK Kink Meme!
>
>> Based off [this](http://cherrymoyaya.tumblr.com/post/68444631017/a-little-gift-to-my-mamita-rica-de-la-coni)
>> 
>> Basically, Eren has bad eye-sight and finally realises that Jean's whammin'-slammin'-booty-licious.
>> 
>> Bonus  
> Everyone's aware Jean's attractive and are used to it. Eren's just not used to seeing faces clearly so he has a stronger reaction
> 
> [Come visit me on Tumblr!](http://emeryylee.tumblr.com)

Eren’s eyesight had never been particularly clear, although it wasn’t until he began his military training that he began to notice shapes and colors once sharp and vibrant were reduced to slightly dull, blurred edges. To discuss his need for visual aid had seemed less than appropriate at the time, though—Eren feared that any such admittance would paint him as weaker than his fellow trainees and would only open him to further ridicule by the officers in command. Besides, Eren didn’t need perfect eyesight to fight disproportionate monsters a hundred times his size. Other than a few uncomfortable incidents when Armin or Mikasa had caught him squinting just a little too hard trying to buckle himself into the 3DMG and the one time he had failed to slash at the appropriate target during practice, Eren was fine. It didn’t matter. He didn’t need help, because he was strong.

When it came time to graduate, there were physical exams. The routine was more of a formality than a necessity, or so Eren had always heard. A few of the higher officers in the stationary troops would mutter things about how it was a waste of time and resources—especially for the trainees planning to enter the scouting legion. Most soldiers died so quickly, so what was the point?

“You’re next, Eren,” Armin said, his blue eyes resting on his friend as he stepped out from behind a curtain, one in a series of many. A small line of boys waited in front of each curtain, where a doctor or someone at least rudimentarily trained in medical practices waited—as always, employees of the army’s medical division were few and far between. Bullet wounds were possible to repair, but titan bites were not. This was a different kind of war.

Eren straightened his back and clenched his fingers into a fist. There was nothing wrong with him, no reason why the doctor wouldn’t allow him to continue into the army. He was perfectly fit, young, healthy, and so much stronger now. He was a survivor, a _warrior_ , though according to the results of his examination he held in his hand after the check-up, a warrior in desperate need of visual correction.

“Just how bad _is_ it?” Armin asked. He peered over Eren’s shoulder at the piece of paper to glance at Eren’s vision results and had to stifle a laugh at the recorded answers. “You really couldn’t see those shapes at all?”

“The letters were the worst,” Eren muttered, turning his head in shame and pulling the paper to his chest so Armin couldn’t gape at the results any longer. “I have to get glasses, then special ones for combat.”

Armin grinned. “Don’t look so ashamed, Eren. It’s not like you won’t graduate or get to enter the scouting legion. Plenty of people have glasses and still do fine.”

Armin’s words meant little, though. Eren knew it shouldn’t have been a big deal, figured that bad eyesight probably ran in the family. His fingers lifted to absentmindedly fiddle with the skeleton key around his neck, and his friend waved his hand in farewell before Eren was ushered by another member of the military personnel to a separate room where he would be fitted for his combat goggles. Within the hour, he was provided with two pairs of glasses—one with thin wire frames and another for use alongside his uniform. He left that pair in his pocket and slid the other onto his face, and for the first time since he could remember, Eren could _see_.

For so long he had been accustomed to guessing at facial features, at the eye color of his comrades, the strategic figures on the chalkboards, but not now. It was overwhelming when he left the medical building and traversed the training grounds back towards the boys’ dormitory, the hard-packed dirt crunching beneath the soles of his boots. Eren found himself staring at the same people he had trained with for three years and feeling like he was only seeing them for the first time. A few people tilted their head at him in passing, probably giggling under their breath as soon as they were out of Eren’s sight. He couldn’t even imagine how he must have looked in them, even if he _did_ feel like he had just been exposed to a clearer and brighter world for the very first time. It was embarrassing. Jean would call him a nerd, and the guys that laughed at all of Jean’s jokes would chime in until Mikasa shot them a furious glare or Eren punched someone in the face—whichever one came first.

“Where’s Eren?” A voice that was unmistakably Connie’s asked.

Eren turned around the corner of a building to find the majority of his squad standing in a circle. Judging by the sun’s position in the sky and the way Sasha was drooling, Eren guessed they were expecting the dinner bell soon.

“Heard he got glasses or something,” Reiner said, just as he spotted Eren and they made eye contact for the first time.

Reiner lifted a hand in greeting, and Jean only muttered, “Glasses?” before turning around to witness the sight for himself.

It was Eren who _really_ witnessed a sight, though, seeing Jean’s face for the first time and the way the slightest blush rose to cover sharp cheek bones and tint flawlessly bronzed skin with the hue of rose petals. _How the hell is he so—_

“How blind _were_ you, Jaeger?” Reiner chuckled, while Bertholdt lifted a hand to his mouth to unsuccessfully hide his own amusement.

“Apparently just blind enough,” Ymir added blandly. “He had no idea.”

Eren blinked for the first time since Jean had turned around. He wanted to take off his glasses again and forget what he had just seen. It fucking ruined _everything_.

“No idea about what?” he asked slowly, forming the words carefully around the numb slab of meat his tongue had become.

“That Jean’s fucking hot, of course.”

 _Oh, no_. Blood rushed to Eren’s face, and the sound of the pumping, liquid rush in his ears overwhelmed him. Were they really implying—

“Everyone knows it, Eren. You’ll get used to it, eventually.” But Eren barely heard the voices. It was hard to listen when something so breathtakingly _perfect_ stood before him. _What the fuck? I don’t even like guys, and I_ definitely _don’t like Jean._

“You don’t look half bad in them,” Jean said. For the most part, he sounded nonchalant, but the other squad members chuckled like they knew something Eren didn’t.

Eren glanced around at his friends, and for every face he saw, his stomach felt heavier and heavier. Christa and Sasha exchanged glances with sparkling eyes, Connie snorted his usual annoying snicker, and Reiner only crossed his arms and shook his head, a sly smile upturning one corner of his lips.

“Jean gets so hot for dudes in glasses,” Connie finally hissed in some form of half-snort and half-laugh, nearly doubled over in laughter.

“Fuck you, Connie!”

The dinner bell rang, and Eren couldn’t even remember how to move his legs in the confusion of the moment. His whole body felt weightless as heat consumed his body and made his head as light as a feather. He watched Jean and how he had to forcibly rip his gaze from Eren before he turned on his heels to follow the rest of the group, most of whom were still doubled over in laughter.

Eren stayed planted, but didn’t overlook Jean’s middle finger when he shoved it in Connie’s face and kicked him in the back of the knee.

“Eren? Are you coming to dinner?”

Mikasa’s voice startled him, but it was more successful in rousing him from his daze than the others had been.

“Yeah.” He forced a smile and prayed she wouldn’t notice the residual blush on his cheeks. She was pretty, too, he noted, her skin smoother and her eyes more full of emotion behind the outward wall of impenetrable mystery.

“You look a little like your dad, that way. It’s not a bad thing,” she quickly corrected. “Don’t let Connie and the others bother you.”

Eren stammered, “I-it’s not Connie, exactly, but whatever.” His voice lowered to a mumble, but luckily Mikasa pressed him no further.

Dinner was largely uneventful, although Eren was sure it was because he sat in the far corner of the dining hall, his back turned to the remainder of his squad while he shoveled food into his mouth and downed the weak beer laid out in pitchers on the table. He wanted out as soon as possible to be able to return to the dormitory in safety, to take a bath with the last of the day’s hot water, and to climb into bed and drown out the typical clamor of the other boys who resided in the same building. He almost thought he had succeeded when he managed to make his way to his bunk and wriggle beneath the blankets just as the front door of the dorm burst open and the commotion of mixed voices poured in.

On an afterthought, Eren reached one hand out from beneath the covers and gingerly pulled his glasses to his side and out of sight.

“You okay, Jaeger?” someone asked, but Eren pretended to already be asleep in favor of actually acknowledging the question, the answer to which would have been something like, “No, I am not fucking okay, thank you.”

“You think Jean should have his bunk assignment changed?”

“Yeah, he’s too close to Eren and those glasses—he might not be able to help himself in the middle of the night.”

“Will you fuck _off_?” Eren heard the frustration in Jean’s voice and _almost_ felt sorry for him. On the other hand, as long as the guys were occupied with tormenting Jean, they were _less_ occupied with making Eren miserable. While Jean continued to defend himself, Eren couldn’t help but wonder if what the others said was true. Did Jean seriously have some sort of glasses fetish? There was no way in hell—

But then the sight of his face returned, and Eren felt the heat of a blush returning to his ears and his cheeks. He rolled over in frustration and gripped the sheets with such ferocity that his fist trembled and his knuckles whitened because he’d be damned if he was going to let himself think about Jean that way again. He convinced himself that the first time was only shock, that it was temporary. Now that he knew what Jean really looked like, he could push it away to the back of his mind like it didn’t matter, because it didn’t, and he could continue on with his life and focus on his graduation in a few days.

“You’re totally awake, Eren.”

And _fuck_ , if it wasn’t Jean’s voice, conjuring images of that handsome face in Eren’s head again, reviving that cocky expression, the slightly upturned lip, the sharp nose and dark eyebrows drawn together in a permanent kind of half-scowl.

“Can you not?” Eren mumbled into his pillow.

“It’s fine. They won’t bother us.” Jean climbed onto the wooden frame where all of the bedding was lined in a row and crawled onto the mattress beside Eren’s. “All I had to do was lift a fist—they know I won’t hesitate to knock their damned lights out.” He added in a quieter undertone, “They haven’t left me the hell alone since dinner started.”

Eren lifted an eyebrow. “Left _you_ alone? I’m the one with the extra pair of eyes.” The idea of Jean being teased was an odd one, if only because it was usually the other way around.

“And I’m the one who _likes_ them, apparently. Dunno where the shitstains even got that idea.”

“So _do_ you?”

With Eren’s glasses off, it was surprisingly easy to have a conversation with Jean like nothing had ever happened, and the lack of wire and glass on Eren’s face seemed to make Jean more comfortable, too.

“A bit, I guess. Who the fuck cares? It’s not like slapping a pair of glasses on your face suddenly makes me want to bang you, Jaeger, so don’t get any weird ideas.”

Eren wasn’t sure if the tug at his heart was relief or disappointment. He didn’t know where the urge came from, but Eren was never one to stifle his impulses, and this one was particularly strong. With a soft rustle of sheets, he pushed himself up onto his elbows and lifted his face to Jean’s, where he planted a kiss on the other boy’s cheek before retreating back beneath his blankets like a snail who had spent way too long out of his shell.

“If my glasses don’t make you want to, maybe that will,” he added with much more confidence in his tone than he actually felt.

It didn’t take incredibly clear vision to see that Jean was shocked and trying to feign disgust, but if all else failed Eren could always say the next morning that the doctors had given him a pill to swallow during his exam, and he hadn’t felt like himself all night. He could play it off like it had never happened, could blame it on something that didn’t exist and suffer through the teasing until Jean ushered himself off to the military police never to be seen again. Once the bastard was gone and he and the rest of the new scouting legion recruits had seen battle for the first time, something so petty as a misplaced kiss would be forgotten.

Someone extinguished the oil lanterns and blew out the remaining candles, and Eren and Jean were plunged into darkness. Eren was conscious of every hard, fast beat of his heart, and he swallowed around the lump in his throat imagining all of Jean’s possible reactions until a pair of trembling lips landed firmly on his own and long fingers wrapped themselves into Eren’s hair. Eren would have gasped, but he wasn’t exactly surprised.

The next few seconds were surprisingly still as Eren adjusted to the feeling of soft skin against his lips and the way Jean’s warm breath felt as it puffed through his slightly open mouth. It was nice, heated and comforting, in a way, even though it was coming from one of the most belligerent trainees in the whole goddamned dormitory.

“Jean,” Eren sighed onto the other’s lips, the name forming unexpectedly when Eren let out the breath he didn’t realize he had been holding. Jean’s fingers wrapped tighter in Eren’s hair and pushed his head forward, forced their lips together more closely until there wasn’t a hair’s breadth separating them. When Jean’s tongue slid across Eren’s bottom lip for the first time, a shock of electricity hotter than anything Eren had ever felt leapt up his spine and lighted his head on fire with an unexpected passion, and he let the smooth, exploring muscle slide between his teeth into his own eager mouth.

Surprisingly, there was no fight for dominance, no forceful contact or rough grabbing, no hair pulling or grunting or harsh biting, only the release of something Eren had been holding inside for much too long—the realization that he held so much respect for the one whose arms he was wrapped in, whose legs tangled with his own. Jean was brilliant, even when he didn’t try. He was an arrogant asshole, but people looked up to him. He was relatable. With a bit of fine tuning and a few years of battle-hardened maturity, Jean could be a leader that the human race needed. He could be a leader whom people would eagerly follow—Eren knew _he_ would.

If only the bastard wasn’t joining the military police. His talents would be wasted there, and Eren would never see him again where he would remain hidden behind that central wall and the stone barriers of the palace.

“Don’t choose the scouting legion, Eren. Don’t do that,” Jean pleaded against Eren’s yielding lips. Jean had apparently been thinking the same things as Eren, like the kiss and the closeness of their bodies connected their minds in ways they hadn’t known were possible.

“Don’t choose the military police.”

“I’ve said it for three years,” Jean whispered. “I’m not suicidal.”

“And I don’t want to be alone.”

“Fuck that. We’ll die.”

And somehow, when Jean said the one thing that everyone knew but refused to acknowledge, Eren found himself at a loss for words. He listened carefully to each beat of Jean’s heart when he pulled Eren’s head to his chest and breathed in deeply the scent of Eren’s hair, still damp from his bath. _I won’t die_ , Eren told himself. _And even if I do, everyone will. So will Jean. It’s only a matter of time before that titan comes back and kicks in Wall Rose. The central wall is next. No one’s safe. We’re like fucking cattle waiting to be slaughtered._

_I’ll fucking kill them all._

“You’re shaking, Eren.”

Jean’s whisper brought Eren back to the reality he didn’t want to face. He clutched at Jean’s shirt and grit his teeth. He didn’t love Jean, anyway, so what was the big deal? He told himself again and again that he was curled into Jean’s form and half-hard against Jean’s leg because it was his last chance to do so and he would have regretted missing the opportunity. It was because he was going to graduate in only a few more days, because he wasn’t going to have any part of himself left to give to anyone else—every piece of him would be dedicated to the scouting legion and to wiping out the race of monsters that had robbed Eren of so much. He had to do this _now_ , if he wanted it at all.

“Put your glasses back on.”

“Why? You can’t see them. It’s dark.”

“There’s moonlight, dumbass. I can see fine.”

Eren forgot his worries and allowed himself to escape again, into a world where he lived for himself and not for vengeance. He slid the glasses back up onto his nose and, sure enough, Jean’s handsome face was waiting for him, traced and caressed by the pale moonlight that shone through the one window left open in the dormitory. Eren’s stomach flipped, and he fidgeted when Jean took his face between his hands to cover Eren’s lips in another greedy kiss.

What it was about Eren’s glasses that made Jean so needy, Eren could never guess, but he didn’t complain when Jean’s mouth trailed up his jawline and to his ear, when he suckled one of Eren’s earlobes and teased it between his teeth.

“They’ll get in the way,” Eren breathed.

“I want you to see me tonight, Jaeger. We’re both too fucking stubborn to change our minds. It’ll be the last time you can.”

Jean was completely right, Eren realized. With some reluctance, Eren decided that remembering Jean this way would be better than harboring bitter or jealous feelings. There were enough ill emotions in Eren’s heart already, and every ounce of cruelty and passion and anger he wanted to save for the battlefield alone. There wasn’t enough energy in Eren, or in any human being, to feel anything but love and compassion for what little remained of their own race.

Hormones and instinct took over, and Eren allowed himself to lurch forward and glide the tip of his tongue along a pulsing vein in Jean’s neck, to taste the saltiness of his skin and mull over its warmth between Eren’s lips when he closed them around a patch between Jean’s shoulder and neck and began to suck.

“Goddammit, don’t leave a mark.”

Eren’s passion riled, and it became more and more difficult to keep quiet. He was painfully aware of every tiny sound and shift they made.

“Should we wait,” Eren asked, “Until they’re asleep?”

Eren felt the shrug of Jean’s shoulders more than he saw it. “Do you really care if they know?”

“ _You_ sure seemed to, judging by how you reacted earlier,” Eren retorted.

The fast rush of air Jean huffed out through his nose was clearly audible in the dormitory’s silence. “Fine. We’ll wait. Just don’t fucking fall asleep. I’m not through with you.”

The last sentence almost sounded like a threat when Jean whispered it in Eren’s ear. Eren cringed at the tickle of Jean’s breath against him and thought he may have felt his cock twitch at the way Jean’s words held a combination of tenderness and authority.

 _Fuck_.

The sounds of Jean’s steady breathing and the fast beat of his heart surrounded Eren until everything he knew in that world was Jean—Jean and nothing more.

Everything should have been so much clearer now that Eren could see, but the fact of the matter was—it wasn’t. Jean’s face may have been distinct, but Eren’s feelings for him were still as blurry and muddled as they had always been and would always be. After some time battling uncertainty and wondering if the boys within earshot were asleep, Eren finally succumbed to his own exhaustion, just as Jean’s grip on him loosened and his breathing, too, slowed with the onset of sleep.

Eren’s eyes fluttered shut behind his wire frames, but his feelings for Jean kept his heart wide open.

**Author's Note:**

> Don't forget to comment! Remember, constructive criticism and other suggestions or ideas are encouraged and appreciated.
> 
> Also, if you liked what you just read, please consider checking out my [personal blog](http://emeryylee.tumblr.com/commissions) where I offer both ghostwriting and fandom commission services!


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